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Hub Walker and his younger brother Gee debuted for the Detroit Tigers in 1931. While Gee became a standout hitter and one of the most popular Tigers in the 1930s, Hub, a scrappy, hard-nosed journeyman center fielder, played in just 297 big-league games in parts of five seasons with the Tigers and Cincinnati Reds. A […]

Growing up in the Pacific Northwest, John Leovich excelled at baseball, football, and hockey with the talent to play each sport professionally. He made national headlines in 1941 when he decided to leave college to pursue a baseball career with the Philadelphia Athletics. That same summer Leovich joined the elite fraternity of players who have […]

Joe Girardi had the big hit in the deciding game of the 1996 World Series, caught a perfect game, won a Manager of the Year Award with one team, and skippered another to a World Series win. An above-average major leaguer for 15 seasons, Girardi will be remembered most for his time helming the post-Joe […]

Dwight Lowry spent the bulk of his four-year major-league career as a backup catcher for the Detroit Tigers between 1984 and 1987, including an extended stay with the 1984 Tigers during their championship run. Aside from his early tragic death after a heart attack, he is best known as one of the relatively few American […]

Who’d have thought that almost a decade after Pete Henning’s final major-league game he could run afoul of none other than Baseball Commissioner Kenesaw Mountain Landis? What’s more, he was connected to an obscure aftereffect of the momentous 1919 Black Sox Scandal. Yet Henning didn’t even have American or National League experience; he peaked as […]

The casual fan of the game might know Ron Swoboda for “The Catch“ in the 1969 World Series, or for his home run heroics in a game against Hall of Famer Steve Carlton, or for Casey Stengel’s early summation: “He will be great, super, even wonderful. Now if he can only learn to catch a […]

Johnny Ostrowski shares the same Polish ancestry as Carl Yastrzemski, but his Red Sox career was in many ways the polar opposite of that of the Hall of Fame legend. While Yaz accumulated a team-record 11,988 regular season at-bats over 3,308 games, Ostrowski is one of 12 position players to appear in only one game, […]

Outfielder Al Shaw played from 1907 to 1909 with the St. Louis Cardinals, for nine end-of-season games in 1907 and for more than 100 games in each of the following two years. For the next four years he played in Single A and Double A, until he came back to the majors for the two […]

Eugene Joseph Bremer Sr., sometimes known as Gene, was born in New Orleans on July 18, 1916. He grew up in the city with his parents, three sisters, and grandmother. His father, Joseph, worked as a driver and his mother, Amanda, as a washerwoman. As a youngster he loved all sports and that led to […]

For several years baseball was very, very good to Danny Tartabull. The game gave him honors and recognition, though not quite as much as he thought he deserved. Baseball paid him millions of dollars, enabling him to live a luxurious life style that most people could barely imagine. But it wasn’t enough. He was unable […]

In the early years, baseball had its share of Buck Weavers, but the most famous among them was not the “original.”  That distinction, according to sportswriter Fred Lieb, goes not to the White Sox infielder, but to William Clinton Bond Weaver, known more commonly today by his other nickname, “Farmer.”1 This Buck Weaver started his […]

Though acknowledging that Fred Luderus “is not a Stuffy McInnis on defense, nor a Jake Daubert in batting, nor a Fred Merkle on the baselines,” J. C. Kofoed in the July 1915 issue of Baseball Magazine called the Phillies first baseman “the most under-rated man in baseball today.” A pure fastball hitter who feasted on […]

Patrick W. Purtell died in his longtime hometown of Columbus, Ohio, on June 1, 1920, and his obituary in the Columbus Dispatch mentioned a notable distinction: all three of Purtell’s sons were professional baseball players, including William, a major leaguer. But not a word was said about the fact that the younger Purtells were following […]

“Saul was a great man and one of my best friends. He was a pretty good player, quite a lady’s man, and one of the greatest people I ever met in my life. He was a good hitter and a good glove man. If things were like they are today, he would have played in […]

When it comes to players who pitched for both the New York Yankees and the New York Mets, Vito Valentinetti’s name is seldom mentioned. Yet he took the mound for the Mets from 1962-1982 and for the Yankees from 1967-1986. He was paid $20 a day, working roughly 15 minutes. The retired major-leaguer – 108 […]

He was known among his colleagues and sports scribes as “The Silencer,” a name he acquired from a Pacific Coast League sports writer in 1962 while playing for Portland. The nickname followed him through his professional baseball career. Dan Osinski, who would later pitch for the Boston Red Sox, was an original “fireman,” as the […]

\Baseball aficionados know that trades, sales, and waivers are a part of the game. The general manager of the 1951 Chicago White Sox was Frank Lane, who earned the nickname Trader Lane for his propensity to exchange players. His attitude must have filtered down through the organization because minor-league director John Rigney engineered a trade […]

It was April 30, 1957. In his first five innings in the majors, catcher Tom Patton did the following: Threw out one future Hall of Famer (Larry Doby) trying to steal; Exchanged rundown throws with a second Cooperstown-bound player (George Kell) to catch a third (Luis Aparicio); and Reached base against a perennial All-Star (Billy […]

Ox Eckhardt has the highest lifetime average in the minor leagues of batters with over 1,000 games played. Some sources even suggest that his career batting average was the best of all time.1 A left-handed hitter with an extremely open stance, he was “almost in motion toward first when he hit the ball. Result, a […]

Eddie Bressoud played over 1,000 big-league games as a shortstop in a 12-year career, primarily for the New York and San Francisco Giants, and the Boston Red Sox. He played 10 or more games at each of the other three infield positions, and one inning in left field. He was a .252 career batter who […]

Simon Rosenthal was one of only 16 Red Sox players who was actually born in the city of Boston and — joining Jack Slattery — one of only two to both live and die in Boston. He garnered more at-bats for the Red Sox than any other Boston native, 357 of them during the years […]

Fans often remember the ends of seasons more readily than the beginnings. What is often associated with the beginnings of the 1975 season for the Cincinnati Reds is that on Saturday, May 17, 1975, the Reds stood at 19-19 and in second place 5½ games behind the rival Los Angeles Dodgers and just a half-game […]

The “greatest hitter who ever lived”? Ted Williams said his goal in life was to have people say, “There goes Ted Williams, the greatest hitter who ever lived.”1 Very few would say he wasn’t in the conversation. He was not particularly known for his defense, though most judged him at least adequate in playing Fenway […]

As a kid growing up in Pasco across the river, being able to stand on the mound at Sanders Field was as big for me as going to Yankee Stadium. — Bruce Kison1 Sanders Field, circa 1953 (Photos courtesy of the Eastern Benton County Historical Society)   Sanders-Jacobs Memorial Field, originally known as Sanders Field, […]